


Keeping the Faith

by thedevilchicken



Category: Flight of the Intruder (1991)
Genre: Fix-It, M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-07
Updated: 2019-02-07
Packaged: 2019-10-24 04:30:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17697674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilchicken/pseuds/thedevilchicken
Summary: Jake heard they got a guy out of the place their A-6 went down.





	Keeping the Faith

**Author's Note:**

  * For [galerian_ash](https://archiveofourown.org/users/galerian_ash/gifts).



He heard, three months and a new ship later, that they'd pulled a guy out from the place their A-6 went down. His sense of dumb fucking hope said maybe it was Virgil, but his head said he'd seen the guys swoop in and bomb him to shit. And besides which, even if they hadn't, he'd been hit real bad - he'd said so himself, once he'd stopped acting like it would all be fine. Virgil was dead so it couldn't be him. Jake knew that. 

He heard, another four months after that, that Virgil Cole really was still alive. After two months driving all the medics mad in the infirmary out at Subic, they'd shipped him back Stateside to try to get him well; he'd been shot and he'd been burned and his damn pelvis had broke, too, but somehow he'd lived through it. It was practically a damn miracle. They'd all just assumed he was dead. Frankly, by all rights, he should've been.

Maybe Jake could've gotten a few days' leave to head back home and check on him, if he'd really pushed for it. Maybe he could've gotten him on the horn one weekend in Subic, but he told himself he didn't know the number. For damn sure he could've written him a letter, but he told himself he didn't have the address. He was gone without a trace and Jake already had a new bombardier. Cole might as well've been dead after all. 

But then the war came to a kind of end and the ones who were left went back home. He stayed in for a while, made LCDR but never set his sights higher. His discharge was honorable, which seemed kinda wrong to him; Virgil had told him once he never broke the faith, but he knew in the end that was exactly what he'd done. He hadn't been the one who'd saved him. If anyone, he knew it should've been him.

That night after SAM City got lit up just like fireworks, he'd been shocked as hell when they weren't just marched straight into the brig. But there they were, still riding that high, bouncing off of the goddamn bulkheads with stupid grins all over their faces all the way back to Virgil's quarters.

Jake wasn't sure if he meant to follow him there or not, but he did. He wasn't sure if Virgil meant to hold the hatch and let him in there after him or not, but he did. And maybe they were still way up in the clouds over Hanoi and that was why what happened happened, or maybe they were just trying to find some way to stretch it out and make that sky-high feeling last; either way, whatever the whys and wherefores of it, the door was barely closed before they were tugging on each other's clothes.

Virgil's mustache tickled when it brushed against Jake's throat, and he laughed out loud and Virgil laughed, too, and none of it seemed like the terrible idea it should've been at all. Virgil knew exactly what to do with his hands. He knew what to do with his mouth, and with Jake's bare skin. They'd both lost people but they hadn't lost each other... at least not until they had, not too long after. The stupid, noble ass had tried real hard to give his life so Jake wouldn't give his own in some kind of dumbass cowboy rescue; for a long time, Jake really hadn't been sure what to do with that.

Two years out and a great new job later, he asked around some of the guys he still knew. It wasn't hard to find a number. It wasn't hard to find a place. He knew he could've done it years before.

Three years out, he went there. In the pouring goddamn winter rain that was nothing like those days at sea at all, he stood outside a New York townhouse and he told himself maybe he didn't even live there anymore. He told himself he was stupid for going there. He told himself maybe they'd been wrong and the guy they'd gotten out was someone else, some amnesiac who looked a bit like him and not Virgil Cole after all. He told himself to leave. He was getting soaked. The three steps up to the closed front door were like a thousand fucking miles.

The door opened. Virgil leaned against the frame of it, nonchalant, with his shoulder to the jamb. He crossed his arms over his chest. He raised his brows. He looked right at him.

"You just gonna stand there?" he asked. 

Jake grimaced. "Yeah," he said. "I kinda thought I might." 

So Virgil, like an ass, came right on outside instead. His feet were bare and he was soaked through in seconds, but he didn't seem to give a damn about that. Frankly, when Virgil kissed him right there on the rainswept sidewalk with his fingers twisted tight into his dripping shirt, neither did Jake.

"You took your sweet time getting here," Virgil told him, once they'd gone inside, once their rain-soaked clothes were in a wet heap on the bedroom floor to stop them shivering. He had his hands at Jake's hips, damp skin on skin. He said it lightly, but the fact of it stung.

"I guess better late than never?" Jake replied. 

"Yeah, well I knew you couldn't stay away forever," Virgil said. "I had faith." And then, he led him to the bed. Jake had never been more willing.

Some things had changed: Virgil's pelvis had never quite healed up as good as new, so they had to take it slow and careful when Jake pushed up inside him. Some things hadn't: Virgil grinned that cocky grin of his that had lit up entire ships before, and it was almost like they'd never been apart. 

Maybe Jake had some guilt to live with, and maybe he had regrets, but he for damn sure knew that Virgil wasn't one of them. He only regretted the time it'd taken him to understand.


End file.
